“My mother’s seen Tess.”

Stephanie raised her eyebrows.

“Tess only shows herself to women.” Ivan took a warm muffin and broke a piece off. “That’s the legend. Only the women of Haben have seen her. And not all of the women. She’s picky about who she scares.” He popped the piece of muffin into his mouth and chewed appreciatively. “These are good!”

“You sound surprised.”

“Mrs. Pease must have made them.”

“Boy, that really hurts.” She put the bowl into the sink to be washed and pushed her hair behind her ears, wondering about the legend, wondering if she believed it. “We have muffins and coffee on deck at seven, right?” Stephanie asked Ivan. She unconsciously caught the tip of her tongue between her teeth and stared at him, only partially listening to his answer, her mind still occupied with thoughts of ghosts.

He grinned at the fresh swipe of batter clinging to her bangs. “Yup. And full breakfast in the galley at eight.” He took a tray and began arranging mugs on it. “So, what do you really want to know?”

Stephanie wiped her hands on her sweat-pants and realized with a start that she’d been telegraphing her inattention. There’d been a time when she would never have dared do that. Now, there was Ivan, seeing right through her, and she was loving it. It was a good feeling. All those years of evasive answers and role-playing and never letting down her guard were behind her, thank heaven. She’d lost patience with it. She wasn’t all that good at relaxing yet, but she was getting better. “Do you honest-to-goodness believe this Aunt Tess business?”

Ivan fed her a piece of his blueberry muffin. “This is not the time or place to discuss such mystic matters. I think we need to arrange a rendezvous.”

“A simple yes-or-no answer would be fine.”

“A simple yes-or-no answer wouldn’t be nearly enough. First of all, you should talk about spooky things when it’s dark. Everybody knows that. And fog helps a lot.” His gaze dropped to her mouth. “And a little moonlight wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”

“Moonlight talk always makes me nervous.”

He fed her another piece of muffin and purposely stroked her lower lip with his fingertip. “It’s my duty as the descendant of a famous pirate to make women nervous once in a while.”

“Gee, Red would be proud of you.”

He pinned her against the counter. “Red would think I was a wimp. You know what real pirates did to their women?” he whispered, letting his lips brush against the sensitive skin just in front of her earlobe.

Stephanie shivered in anticipation.

“They ravished them,” Ivan told her. “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

“That’s it? No details?”

Ivan threw her a stern look. “You’re not cooperating here. You’re supposed to be intimidated.”

“You know what intimidates me? The thought of making breakfast. According to Lucy, I’m supposed to whip up a cauldron of oatmeal, three dozen eggs, and seven pounds of bacon.”

“Sounds about right.” He took the tray of mugs and turned toward the stairs. “I’ll meet you on the poop deck tonight at ten, Cinderella. Wear something appropriate for ravishing.”

At ten o’clock Stephanie took the last of the blueberry pies out of the oven and damped down the fire. Now she knew why Lucy made pies first thing in the morning. If you tried to make them in the afternoon, when the ship was under way, the filling slopped over the sides and baked on the bottom of the stove. So you had your choice of making them at night or making them in the morning. Since Stephanie wasn’t a morning person, she’d decided to make them at night.

She looked down at herself and took an inventory of everything she’d cooked: oatmeal, spaghetti sauce, cookie batter, blueberry pies, and coffee. Wonderful. And she hadn’t washed her hair since the previous morning or changed out of the sweats she’d slept in the night before. On the positive side, she’d cooked a damned good dinner of fried chicken, biscuits, green beans, and corn on the cob. Cooking wasn’t much different from police work, she concluded. It required concentration, imagination, hard work, a little technical knowhow… and luck. She looked longingly at her bunk, wanting nothing more than to crawl behind the red curtain and sleep for at least a year. Unfortunately, Ivan was waiting for her on deck.

Ivan levered himself down the galley stairs, a slow smile spreading across his face as he took in the sight of Stephanie Lowe at the end of her first full day aboard the Savage. “I got tired of waiting, so I thought I’d come check things out. Pretty tough job, huh?”

“A hot shower, and I’ll be good as new.”

“I have a better idea. What you need after a long day of slaving over a scorching stove is a moonlight swim. Cool, refreshing…” Erotic, he added to himself.

A moonlight swim sounded great. Too bad she didn’t have the strength to drag herself up the galley steps. “It’s a lovely idea, but I’d sink like a stone. I’m exhausted. I’m afraid I’m going to have to opt for the shower.”

Ivan slung his arm around her shoulders. “Honey, this is a carefully restored nineteenth century schooner. We don’t have a shower.”

“Oh Lord, no shower.” She slumped against him. “I have blueberry batter in my hair and spaghetti sauce soaked right through to my underwear, and you’re telling me we don’t have a shower?”

If she’d been alone, she probably would have burst into tears. She would have cried for all the kids she wasn’t able to save from drugs. She would have cried for the Steve she never knew. She would have cried for all the times in the past eight years when she had desperately needed to cry and wasn’t allowed that luxury. But she wasn’t alone, and she had too much pride to cry in front of a man she’d known for only two days. Besides, she wasn’t a woman who cried over spaghetti sauce. Usually she found a well-aimed expletive to be much more satisfying than indulging in tears. “So you suggest swimming, huh?”

“Did you bring a bathing suit?”

Stephanie sighed. She didn’t even own a bathing suit. Narcs in Jersey City didn’t lounge around at poolside waiting for middle-class crime, and they couldn’t afford fancy vacations.

Ivan grabbed the bottle of dish-washing detergent from the sink and pulled Stephanie to the stairs. “From the sound of that sigh, I take it the answer is no.” He pushed her up the stairs and stood beside her on the deck. “Are you the modest type?”

“My gynecologist asks that same question once a year, then he makes me sit in a freezing cold room wearing nothing but a paper jacket.”

“What a brute. This is going to be much more fun.”

Stephanie looked over the side of the ship at the still, black water. “You’re not expecting me to skinny-dip, are you?”

“How bad do you want to get clean?”

The deck was empty and dark except for the soft glow of light escaping up the cabin hatches. The air was cool and heavy with the smell of the sea. The water lapped gently against the sides of the ship. It was inviting and scary as hell. “Can you keep the crowds of thrill seekers away?”

“Absolutely.”

“And what about you?” she asked. “Are you swimming?”

“No. I’m ogling. Besides, I’m in charge of crowd control, remember?”

“Crowd control, yes. Ogling, no. How do I do this? It looks like a long way down.”

“The yawl is tied behind us. Just use the stern ladder. You can get undressed in the yawl and quietly slip into the water.” He handed her the bottle of dish detergent. “Use this to wash your hair. It won’t get gummy in seawater.”

He watched her go over the gunwale and scale the side of the ship like a cat burglar. Lithe, silent, efficient. He admired her style and, at the same time, hated the knowledge that it was probably a talent she’d acquired in dark, garbage-strewn alleys in seedy neighborhoods. He’d like to believe she’d directed traffic in front of a grade school or had had a nice, boring desk job, but he instinctively knew differently, and he felt his gut knot at the thought of her going toe-to-toe with drug dealers and the slime they fed off.

Stephanie settled herself in the boat and removed her shoes. “Turn your back,” she called to Ivan, thinking he looked like the Cheshire cat with his rascally smile floating in the shadows of the night. “I’m not getting undressed with you staring at me.”

I’m not much of a pirate, he thought, back turned. A real pirate would be down there in the boat with her… or at least sneaking a peek when she wasn’t looking. He heard her sweats drop to the floor of the yawl and the soft splash of her hitting the water. And then the scream. His heart slammed against the wall of his chest, and in an instant he was over the gunwale, flying down the rope ladder. He reached the boat just as her head bobbed to the surface. “Holy Toledo!” she said, gasping. “This is cold! You miserable excuse for a human being, why didn’t you tell me it would be this cold? And what are you doing in the boat?”

Ivan put his hand to his heart. “You screamed! I thought… I thought Jaws got you.”

Several passengers looked down at Stephanie and Ivan.

“What’s going on?” Mr. Pease wanted to know. “Are we interrupting anything?”

“It was the knife killer, wasn’t it?” Loretta Pease asked. “Soon as I heard that scream, I knew it was the knife killer striking again.”

Ivan looked up at her. “No, it wasn’t the knife killer. It was just Cookie taking a bath.”

“At this time of the night?”

“She had blueberry batter in her hair,” Ivan explained. “You can all go back to bed now.”

“Great crowd control,” Stephanie said. “Maybe we should have sold tickets.”

Ivan grinned at her and poured a glob of dish detergent on the top of her head. “Hold on to the edge of the boat, and I’ll wash your hair.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Can you see below the water?”